Unit 2: Introduction

United States History from 1877

Unit 2: War, Recovery, and Depression, 1900-1939

The American intervention in World War I cast the die for the United States as a world power for the remainder of the century. Students can learn much about the complexities of foreign policy today by studying the difficulties of maintaining neutrality in World War I while acquiring the role of an economic giant with global interests and fervently wishing to export democracy around the worldIn the postwar period, the prosperity of the 1920s and the domination of big business and Republican politics are also important to study. The 1920s displayed dramatically the American urge to build, innovate, and explore—represented by Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, which excited more enthusiasm than any single event up to that time. The cultural and social realms also contain lessons from history that have resonance today.

In its effects on the lives of Americans, the Great Depression was one of the great shaping experiences of American history, ranking with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the second industrial revolution. More than Progressivism, the Great Depression brought about changes in the regulatory power of the federal government. It also enlarged government’s role in imposing relief measures on the capitalist system, bringing an element of welfare state capitalism to the U.S. economy, such as had appeared earlier in industrial European nations.

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